Green garden snakes can be dangerous. Read on.
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--------------- A couple in Sweetwater, Texas had quite a few potted plants. During a cold spell, the wife brought a bunch of them indoors to protect them from a possible freeze. It turned out that a little green garden snake had hidden in one of the plants, and when it had warmed up, it slithered out. The wife saw it go under the sofa. She let out a very loud scream. Her husband, who was taking a shower, ran into the living room naked to see what the problem was. She told him there was a snake under the sofa. He got down on the floor on his hands and knees to look for it.
About that time, the family dog came and cold-nosed him on the leg. He thought the snake had bitten him and he fainted. His wife thought he had had a heart attack, so she called an ambulance. The attendants rushed in and loaded him on the stretcher and started carrying him out.
The snake came out from under the sofa; one of the Emergency Medical Technicians saw it and dropped his end of the stretcher, breaking one of the man's legs.
The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she called a neighbor. He volunteered to capture the snake, armed himself with a rolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch. Soon he decided it must be gone. He told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief. But, while relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where she felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and fainted, the snake went back under the sofa, and the neighbor man, seeing her passed out, thought he should use CPR to revive her.
The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping at the grocery store, happened to look in. Upon seeing her husband's mouth on the neighbor woman's mouth, she ran in and slammed her husband in the back of the head with a bag of canned goods, knocking him out and cutting his scalp to a point where it required stitches.
The noise woke the first woman from her faint. She saw her neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him and assumed he had been bitten by the snake. She went to the kitchen, brought back a small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the man's throat.
In all the commotion, some neighbor had called the police. Upon arriving, they saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a drunken fight had occurred. They were about to arrest all of the people.
The two women tried to explain how it all happened because of a little green snake. They were allowed to call an ambulance, which took away the neighbor and his sobbing wife.
Just then the little snake crawled out from under the couch. One of the policemen drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake and hit the leg of the end table that was on one side of the sofa. The table fell over and the lamp on it shattered and, as the bulb broke, it started a fire in the drapes.
The other policeman tried to beat out the flames and fell through the window into the yard on top of the family dog, who, startled, jumped up and raced out into the street. An oncoming car swerved to avoid it and smashed into the parked police car, setting it on fire.
Meanwhile, the burning drapes had spread to the walls and the entire house was ablaze.
Neighbors had called the Fire Department. The arriving fire truck had started raising its ladder as they were halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires and put out the electricity and disconnected the telephones in a ten-square city block area.
Time passed. Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was rebuilt, the police acquired a new car, and all was right with the world.
About a year later the original couple were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night. The husband asked his wife if she thought they should bring in their plants for the night.
Naturally, she shot him.